Monday, February 20, 2012

There Are Between 120 And 175 Languages In The Philippines








Did you know that there are between 120 and 175 languages in the Philippines, depending on the method of classification. Four languages no longer have any known speakers. Almost all the Philippine languages belong to the Austronesian language family. Of all of these languages,only 2 are considered official in the country while (as of 2010) about 12 are considered official auxiliary.

Spanish was the first official language of the nation for more than three centuries, and have become the lingua franca with the Philippines inside the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1863 a Spanish decree introduced universal education, creating free public schooling in Spanish. It had been also the language with the Philippine Revolution, and also the 1899 Malolos Constitution proclaimed it the official language from the First Philippine Republic. National hero José Rizal wrote nearly all of his works in Spanish, Luciano de la Rosa, established which it was spoken by way of a total of 60% from the population in early 20th century like a first, second or third language. Pursuing the American occupation from the Philippines as well as the imposition of English, using Spanish declined gradually, especially following your 1940s.

Beneath the U.S. occupation and civil regime, English begun to be taught in schools. By 1901, public education used English because the medium of instruction. Around 600 educators (called "Thomasites") who arrived at that year aboard the USS Thomas replaced the soldiers who also functioned as teachers. The 1935 Constitution added English as a possible official language alongside Spanish. A provision within this constitution also referred to as for Congress to "take steps toward the expansion and adoption of your common national language depending on one of the existing native languages." On November 12, 1937, the very first National Assembly came up with National Language Institute. President Manuel L. Quezón appointed native Waray-Waray speaker Jaime C. De Veyra to chair a committee of speakers of other regional languages. Their purpose was to pick a national language on the list of other regional languages. Ultimately, Tagalog was chosen because the base language December 30, 1937.

In 1939, President Manuel L. Quezón renamed the Tagalog language as Wikang Pambansa ("National language" in English translation). The word what was further renamed in 1959 as Pilipino by Secretary of Education Jose Romero. The 1973 constitution declared the Pilipino language to become co-official, along with English, and mandated the creation of a National language, being known as Filipino.

The existing constitution, ratified later, stated that Filipino and English are generally the official languages of the nation. Filipino also had the excellence of being a national language that has been to be "developed and enriched based on existing Philippine as well as other languages." While not explicitly produced in the constitution, Filipino is within practice almost completely made up of the Tagalog as spoken inside the capital, Manila; however, organizations including the University with the Philippines began publishing dictionaries including the UP Diksyonaryong Filipino where words from various Philippine languages were included as well. The constitution also made reference to Spanish and Arabic, each of which are to be promoted on the voluntary and optional basis.

Filipino is definitely an official language of education, but less important than English. Oahu is the major language from the broadcast media and cinema, but less important than English being a language of publication (except in certain domains, like comics, which are supposed to speak straight to the Filipino psyche) and fewer important for academic-scientific-technological discourse. English and Filipino compete within the domains of economic and government. Filipino can be used as a lingua franca in every regions of the Philippines in addition to within overseas Filipino communities, and it is the dominant language with the armed forces (except perhaps for your small section of the commissioned officer corps from wealthy or upper middle-class families) and also a large part from the civil service, the majority of whom are non-Tagalogs.

Nobody questions that there are diglossia in the case of Filipino as well as the other regional languages. In cases like this, Filipino can clearly be labelled since the acrolect (the "standard") and also the regional languages the basilect.

The Constitution from the Philippines supplies the use of the vernacular languages as auxiliary languages in provinces where Filipino isn't the lingua franca. This is however not implemented as Filipinos as a whole would be polyglots. In case where the vernacular language is really a regional language, Filipinos would speak in Filipino when conversing in formal situations even though the regional languages are spoken in non-formal settings. This can be evident in main urban areas outside of the National Capital Region like Angeles City within the Kapampangan-speaking area, and Davao inside the Cebuano-speaking area. Even though the case of Ilocano and Cebuano have become more of bilingualism than diglossia as a result of publication of materials developed in these languages.

The diglossia is much more evident regarding other languages including Pangasinan, Kapampangan, Bikol, Waray, Hiligaynon, Sambal, and Maranao, the location where the written variant with the language has become less and less popular to offer way to using Filipino. Although Philippine laws consider many of these languages as "major languages" if you don't, if any, support from the government to preserve these languages. This can be bound to change, however, given current policy trends. Although Philippine linguists would agree that there's still no danger of those languages becoming extinct soon, the lack of support in the government makes them languages susceptible to “bastardisation”.

There still exists a different type of diglossia, which is between the regional languages and also the minority languages. Here, we label the regional languages as acrolects as the minority languages because the basilect. In this case, the minority language is spoken only in very intimate circles, just like the family or even the tribe one is associated with. Outside this circle, you might speak inside the prevalent regional language, and keep an adequate command of Filipino for formal situations. Unlike the situation of the regional languages these minority languages will always be in danger of becoming extinct due to speakers favoring the greater prevalent regional language. Moreover, a lot of the users of the languages are illiterate so that as expected, there exists a chance these languages will not be revived because of lack of a diary.

Source : Wikipedia

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